scholarly journals Disciplinary crisis in valorisation of art

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-152
Author(s):  
Nataša Lah
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Dynamic System ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Art History ◽  
Art Theory ◽  
Short Account ◽  
Actual Time ◽  
History Of ◽  
As If

Generally speaking, values among objects - as well as among art valuables - are defined based on the especially significant properties and qualificatives differentiating i.e. privileging that artwork within a family of congenial phenomena/objects; first in the time of its origination and then in present time. The history of aesthetics and that of cultures both mirror the unstable status of the qualificatives of art value i.e. conditions for the historical transformations of valorisation. Objects or phenomena which pretended to be what we today call the valuable artworks, have acquired the required qualification within a hierarchised framework of their own time's cultural demand1 . A dynamic system of changes in equalising artwork's value with its social status brought about the disciplinary crisis of art theory, which failed to adapt axiologically to the new receptions of art and the standards of actual time.2 I'll derive a short account of crisis from the fundamental questions concerning the meaning of beauty, value and valorisation within culture and art, through history. The crisis arises during the period from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, when art history became disciplinary articulated, incorporating the valorisation mechanisms of that time into its own methodological matrix, as if it was supratemporal and ahistorical.

Figurines

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Roman Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
Material Concept ◽  
As If

This book concerns figurines from cultures that have no direct links with each other. It explores the category of the figurine as a key material concept in the art history of antiquity through comparative juxtaposition of papers drawn from Chinese, pre-Columbian, and Greco-Roman culture. It extends the study of figurines beyond prehistory into ancient art-historical contexts. At stake are issues of figuration and anthropomorphism, miniaturization and portability, one-off production and replication, substitution and scale. Crucially, figurines are objects of handling by their users as well as their makers—so that, as touchable objects, they engage the viewer in different ways from flat art. Unlike the voyeuristic relationship of viewing a neatly framed pictorial narrative, as if from the outside, the viewer as handler is always potentially and without protection within the narrative of figurines. This is why they have had potential for a potent, even animated, agency in relation to those who use them.

A ‘milky mass’ and ‘uniform material’: white marble in eighteenth-century French discourses on sculpture and geology

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-225
Author(s):  
Marthe Kretzschmar
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Grain Size ◽  
Denis Diderot ◽  
Art Theory ◽  
White Marble ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Earth ◽  
History Of ◽  
Interdisciplinary Network

Knowledge of the materiality of stone during the Enlightenment expanded following the exploration of mineralogical structure, to alter ideas about taxonomy and challenge the role of rocks in the history of the earth. Close studies of the material of marble sculpture generated expertise on grain size, surface varieties and stone deposits. This mode of reception became intertwined with contemporary controversies about the age of the earth. This article focuses on both French sculpture and geological discourses of the eighteenth century to reveal an international and interdisciplinary network centring on protagonists such as Denis Diderot, Paul-Henri Thiry d’Holbach and Étienne-Maurice Falconet; through these figures, debates can be connected concerning both geology and art theory. Within these contexts, the article discusses the translation processes between these artistic and geological interests.

Jan van Gool als kunstcriticus

1983 ◽  
Vol 97 (4) ◽  
pp. 266-283
Author(s):  
Lyckle De Vries
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
The Other ◽  
Reliable Information ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Art Theory ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Dutch Art ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
History Of ◽  
Expression Of Emotions

AbstractIn 1750 and 1751 Jan van Gool published two volumes of artists' biographies entitled De Nieuwe Schouburg (Note 2). This sequel to Houbraken's Groote Schouburgh (.Note I) is an important source for Dutch art history of the period around 1700. The author's opinions are not strictly governed by the rules of art theory, nor is he a convinced Classicist. His main aim is to give complete and reliable information on the lives and works of artists. In so doing he cannot refrain from giving personal opinions. These characterize him as a competent art critic, who seems to have had an eye for style and quality. He despises work by contemporaries who still adhere to the Leiden tradition of fijnschilderen (small-scale, highly-finished painting). In his view the composition of a painting is of prime importance in assessing its quality, for it is mostly there that an artist's inventiveness, or lack of it, is revealed. Another aspect of great importance is the expression of emotions in painted figures through their glances, gestures and attitudes. Van Gool praises not only history painters who prove to have abilities in this field, but also painters of genre scenes and portraits. He pays far more attention to a painter's brushwork than his style of drawing, his predilection being for masters with a 'courageous' brush. Relatively little attention is given to colour and light and to the plasticity of painted figures. Van Gool's ideals seem to be summed up in the word natural. The essential qualities of the subjects painted must be made visible in the work of art. A painstaking realism in the Leiden tradition would endanger this ideal as much as a severe Classicism. The observation of reality should not be carried so far that details become more important than totalities, but on the other hand the overall form should not be idealized to such an extent that reality is forgotten.

scholarly journals WILLI DROST: THE LAST DIRECTOR OF THE STADTMUSEUM (CITY MUSEUM) IN GDAŃSK

Muzealnictwo ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 60 ◽  
pp. 108-120
Author(s):  
Iwona Kramer-Galińska
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
100Th Anniversary ◽  
Scholarly Activity ◽  
Art Theory ◽  
Ww Ii ◽  
Art Works ◽  
History Of ◽  
German Nationality ◽  
Free City Of Danzig ◽  
The City

As much as the history of the Free City of Danzig (1920–1939) has been dedicated numerous academic studies, the activity of its institutions and people, particularly Gdańsk residents of German nationality who played a significant role in the city’s political, cultural, scientific, educational, and spiritual life until 1945 has been hardly investigated. One of such individuals is Willi Drost born in Gdańsk in 1892. Following his studies and academic work in Leipzig, Marburg, Cologne, and Konigsberg, in 1930 he returned to Gdańsk, where he was offered the position of a custodian and later conservator of monuments of the Free City of Gdańsk; furthermore, as of 1938 he was appointed Director of the City Museum, which he remained uninterruptedly until 1945. Beginning from 1930, he was also professor of art history at the Technischer Hochschule, engineering university, as well as curator of Museum Collections for the whole region of Gdańsk – Western Prussia. His scholarly activity yielded numerous publications in art theory, North European modern painting, and Gdańsk art. Furthermore, Drost takes credit for the inventory of Gdańsk historic churches conducted from 1934 onwards. Resorting to the preserved materials, in 1957–1964, Drost published a 5-volume series titled Art Monuments of the City of Gdańsk (Kunstdenkmäler der Stadt Danzig). During WW II, together with Prof. Erich Volmar, he supervised the action of protecting and evacuating art works from the City Museum, Town Hall’s Red Room, Artus Manor, Uphagen’s House, as well as from churches and other historic facilities. Directly following the end of WW II, Drost stayed on in Gdańsk, helping Polish art historians to recover art works hidden in the city and its vicinity. Having left for Germany in the spring of 1946, he was professor at Hamburg and Tubingen universities. Until his last days he continued to promote the cultural heritage of Gdańsk. In recognition of his merits, Drost was honoured with numerous awards in Germany, while in 1992, on the 100th anniversary of his Birthday, a plaque commemorating him was unveiled in front of the building of the former City Museum (Stadtmuseum), today housing the National Museum in Gdańsk. The paper’s goal is to popularize Drost’s endeavours as a museologist, and to recall all he did for Gdańsk.

TALL HISTORIES: HEIGHT AND GEORGIAN MASCULINITIES

2016 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 79-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew McCormack
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Human Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Health And Nutrition ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

ABSTRACTHeight is rarely taken seriously by historians. Demographic and archaeological studies tend to explore height as a symptom of health and nutrition, rather than in its own right, and cultural studies of the human body barely study it at all. Its absence from the history of gender is surprising, given that it has historically been discussed within a highly gendered moral language. This paper therefore explores height through the lens of masculinity and focuses on the eighteenth century, when height took on a peculiar cultural significance in Britain. On the one hand, height could be associated with social status, political power and ‘polite’ refinement. On the other, it could connote ambition, militarism, despotism, foreignness and even castration. The article explores these themes through a case-study of John Montagu, earl of Sandwich, who was famously tall and was frequently caricatured as such. As well as exploring representations of the body, the paper also considers corporeal experiences and biometric realities of male height. It argues that histories of masculinity should study both representations of gender and their physical manifestations.

James Byres of Tonley: Jacobites and Etruscans

2010 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-274
Author(s):  
Peter Davidson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Art History ◽  
History Of Archaeology ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Art Dealers ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

James Byres of Tonley (1734–1817) is a pivotal figure in many respects, whose life as a virtuoso has been the subject of exemplary scholarship in the fields of art history and the history of archaeology. For three decades, he was close to the centre of the circle of artists, antiquarians and art-dealers who guided and advised the grand tourists and student artists visiting Rome, then the unchallenged capital of the visual arts worldwide. His fortunes, and those of his family, are typical of those of the last generation of Aberdeenshire Catholics before the Relief Acts of the late eighteenth century and the death of Henry Benedict, Cardinal York, in 1807. Like many Scots, whose cultural or military achievements were enacted in continental exile, he is not particularly remembered nor celebrated in Scotland itself.

The Price of Offices in Pre-Revolutionary France

1984 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 831-860 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Doyle
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Early History ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
National Assembly ◽  
History Of ◽  
Local Courts ◽  
The Government

One of the most distinctive features of the French Ancien Régime was the sale of offices. Several European states resorted to this method of tapping the wealth of their richer subjects in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but nowhere did venality spread further through society than in France, and nowhere did its importance persist so long. Although the revolutionaries of 1789 abolished it, it reappeared for certain public functions in the early nineteenth century, and has not quite vanished even today. The origins and early history of the system have been authoritatively studied, but its eighteenth-century history has received very little attention. This is all the more curious in that France continued to be governed largely by holders of venal offices, they constituted the backbone of opposition to the government in the form of the magistrates of the parlements, and huge amounts of capital continued to be absorbed by office-buying. Even so, most historians consider that by this time the venal system was in decline. This seemed to be demonstrated by unsold offices remaining on the market, and above all by falling, office prices. For Alfred Cobban, indeed, these trends were symptoms of the decline of a whole class, the officiers. Here was ‘a section of society which was definitely not rising in wealth, and was barely holding its own in social status’ as falling office prices showed. ‘The decline seems to have been general, from the parlements downwards, though until the end of the eighteenth century it was much less marked in the offices of the parlements than in those of the présidiaux, élections, maréchaussées and other local courts.’ Resentment at this decline explained the revolutionary fervour of the officiers, whom Cobban had previously shown to be the largest bourgeois group in the National Assembly; and 1789 was largely the work not of a rising capitalist bourgeoisie, but rather of a declining professional one.

V. Gordon Childe and Arnold Hauser on the social origins of the artist

Thesis Eleven ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 072551362110533
Author(s):  
Jim Berryman
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
Social History ◽  
Art History ◽  
Ruling Class ◽  
Dominant Ideology ◽  
Western Art ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of Art ◽  
History Of ◽  
Marxist Interpretation

Vere Gordon Childe’s theory of craft specialisation was an important influence on Arnold Hauser’s book The Social History of Art, published in 1951. Childe’s Marxist interpretation of prehistory enabled Hauser to establish a material foundation for the occupation of the artist in Western art history. However, Hauser’s effort to construct a progressive basis for artistic labour was complicated by art’s ancient connections to religion and superstition. While the artist’s social position and class loyalties were ambiguous in Childe’s accounts of early civilisations, Hauser consigned artists to the lower echelons of society. This relegation did not imply that Hauser had a low regard for artistic skills. Quite the opposite, the artist’s inferior social status enabled Hauser to distance artists from the ruling class, and consequently, to separate artistic handiwork from the dominant ideology that works of art manifested.

Introduction

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Teller
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Economic Activity ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Institutional Economics ◽  
Cultural Factors ◽  
New Institutional Economics ◽  
Financial Success ◽  
The Family ◽  
History Of

The book makes three main interventions. First is the use of Jewish economic history to understand both the development of Jewish society and its relations with the surrounding world. The methodology of New institutional economics, emphasizing the connection between economic and cultural factors, is employed. Second is the study of the Jews’ economic roles in the specific context of magnate estates in eighteenth-century Poland-Lithuania. In this late feudal setting, Jews achieved enormous financial success, which they translated into improved social status and even power. This process is at the heart of the analysis here. Third is the history of the Radziwiłł family and its estates in Lithuania. From a low point at the beginning of the period, the family reached the pinnacle of its power at the end. This rise was based on increased estate incomes, the importance for which of Jewish economic activity is examined here.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document