Art History for Artists

The formation of art history as a discipline during the 19th century has been variously associated with the politics of national identity, the needs of a growing bourgeois public in search of cultural capital, or of an expanding art market. However, the role of art training, and art practitioners themselves in the shaping of the discipline remains unexamined. This volume explores the interactions between art practice and scholarship, focusing on the ways in which the institutional framework of art education and exposure to the problems of artistic practice affected the historical study of art. It further examines how artists themselves reacted to the emergence of a community of professional specialists claiming control over art discourse.