Title:
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Papierkulture : the new public, the print market and the art press in late eighteenth century Germany.
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The thesis investigates some elements of the eighteenth
century German public sphere concerned with the visual arts.
It considers the periodical press (with the art journal
Miscellaneen artistischen Inhalts [1779-1808] providing a
particular focus), the new bourgeois public for this press
(the subject of Part I), and what is argued was the most
crucial mediator of the visual to the new public, the
engraved print, particularly the English print. The thesis
locates these issues into the larger project of eighteenth
century German bourgeois society, that is, the creation of a
cultured class, with the 'man of taste' at its core. Part
II considers the periodical press in general, and the art
journal in particular, in relation to the new reading public
and to the role they played in mediating/constructing
information about the print as an art object. The role of
print collecting handbooks in creating a discourse about the
print as art and as equal to painting is similarly
considered. The idea of Nachr.ichtenverkehr (information
exchange) as part of Warenverkehr (commodity exchange) is
discussed in terms of the art journal's use of artist's
biography and its role in the print market. Part III
focusses on the fashion (Mode) for the English print in
Germany and explores, through the use of the case study, the
issues of review writing and the male reader/viewer in
regard to the subject matter, form, and medium of the
English print (and some of its German imitators) . It is
argued that the English print, because of its strong market
presence and its representation of what was believed to be a
positive English middle class model, had a relevance to
Germany's new art collecting public. The specific examples
of the stippled 'fancy' picture, the 'Grecian' pictures of
Arigelica Kauffmann and the engraved modern history piece of
West's Death of General Wolfe, are discussed respectively in
terms of gendered viewing, bourgeois notions of virtue and
the 'feeling' viewer. The final section points out that the
development of a public taste, as formed by the press and
the print market, was not without its opponents. The use of
the public's press by scholars and academicians is discussed
in terms of their project as self-appointed leaders in the
creation of a tasteful society, and their own agenda of
instituting measurable standards based on their
interpretation of the antique, art theory and a
metahistorical notion of 'art'.
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