Art History for Artists - Interactions Between Scholarly Discourse and Artistic Practice in the 19th Century

The international conference aimed to explore the interactions and productive tensions between art practice and art scholarship in the 19th century.

• Date: July 7 - July 9 2016
• Venue: Technische Universität Berlin, Straße des 17. Juni 135, 10623 Berlin

Eleonora Vratskidou [3], Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow - TU Berlin

Supported by Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung and TU Berlin

The conference aimed to examine the shaping of art history as a discipline during the 19th century in relation to artistic training and exchanges between artists and scholars. The development of art history has been associated with an array of socio-political and economic factors such as the formation of a bourgeois public, the politics of national identity and state legitimacy or the needs of an expanding art market. This conference aspires to explore yet another, less studied dimension: the extent to which the historical study of art was also rooted in an intention to inform contemporary artistic production.

The scholarship produced by the first generations of art historians in this period was intertwined with their interest in the art of their time, its quality and future development. Throughout the century many art historians made studies entirely dedicated to contemporary art and sought to provide artists with new ideals. The connection between scholarly discourse and artistic practice was also validated at an institutional level. Since the late 18th century courses in art history, along with courses in history, archaeology, art theory and aesthetics, had been systematically incorporated into the curricula of art academies, schools of design, academies of architecture and polytechnics. These spaces of art education were among the first institutional homes of art history, and played an important role in the shaping of the discipline well before the establishment of autonomous university chairs - a development largely overlooked in the history of art history, but also in the history of art education.

The historical study of art questioned established canons and multiplied the aesthetic models available for artists. Many artists claimed a new role as creators for art history and for the museum, reacting against the growing commodification of art. At the same time, the influx of knowledge on past art was often seen as a burden for artistic creativity. The overall reflective turn upon art and its past, tainted by the Hegelian proclamation of the end of art, influenced the work of artists in ways that remain to be explored.

Merten Lagatz, Conference Report [4], in: Punctum, 2(1) (2016), S. 92–93, (URL: http://punctum.gr/ [5], 14.12.2016).

Ulf Dingerdissen, Tagungsbericht: Der bildende Künstler als Kunsthistoriker – Kunstgeschichte für zeitgenössische Künstler [6], in: Kunstchronik 11 (2016), S. 532–536.

Program [7]

Booklet [8]

Call for Papers [9]

PROGRAM

Thursday July 7, 2016 – H 3005 

Friday July 8, 2016 – H 1035

Saturday July 9, 2016 – H 1035